Some Maintenance Required by Marie-Renée Lavoie

Author:Marie-Renée Lavoie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2022-06-13T14:57:18+00:00

9

“My mom has a boyfriend. Can you believe it?”

“What’s he like?”

“Dumb as a brick and ugly as sin.”

“What does she see in him?”

“He takes her to dinner on weekends. She claims he looks like Clint Eastwood.”

“Yeesh.”

“If Clint Eastwood was punched in the face . . . And kept telling boring, pointless stories.”

“Does she still want to move?”

“She’s starting to talk about moving in with him.”

“Where’s that?”

“Where does a critter like that live?”

“I dunno, Beauport?”

“Try the asshole of the world: Val-Bélair.”

“Shit . . .”

“Exactly. No way I’m moving there.”

“We’ll find something, Sonia.”

“Should we look in the Upper Town?”

“Too expensive. And I’ll be far from work.”

“Clint Eastwood says he can get me an interview at a restaurant.”

“Which one?”

“It’s called Brew.”

“Isn’t that a bar?”

“They serve food, too. Hamburgers, club sandwiches, stuff like that. They even serve breakfast.”

“Oh, cool.”

We’d devised a simple plan that was taking a while to come together: 1. I’d become a server. 2. Sonia would take over as hostess. 3. She’d become a server. 4. We would live off our tips in a beautiful apartment with wainscotting and crown moldings. While going to school, of course. Sonia’s dream was to become an accountant and make “boatloads of cash,” as her mother hoped; I was trying to avoid jobs with the word “mechanic” in the title.

“So, did you call him?”

“Who?”

Eye roll.

“Not yet.”

“Come on, scaredy cat! He wrote you a letter!”

• • •

On Claude’s last night at the Italian place, the dining room was packed to the rafters. The cacophony was almost enough to drown out the shouts of flustered servers and cooks, whose patience and organization were being put to the test by this sudden rush. It was a perfect night for anybody hoping to pull a dine-and-dash; in the commotion, they should have been able to slip out unnoticed. Should have.

Around 7 p.m., Theresa burst into the kitchen spitting with rage.

“The guy at twenty-seven is gone! The one in the suit with the red face! DID ANYONE SEE THE GUY AT TWENTY-SEVEN? THE ONE WITH THE RED FACE? HE TOOK OFF WITHOUT PAYING, THE LITTLE FUCKER!”

The man had shown up alone, dressed in a strange three-piece suit, and had asked to change tables three times. It made sense now; he’d been strategically positioning himself.

As soon as Claude heard Theresa’s words, he dashed out to the parking lot. Seeing him leave, the customers swarmed the front window like a school of fish, and everyone watched as he caught up to the thief, who was weaving between cars. Jean-Sébastien, hygienically sporting his hairnet, joined the chase. Estelle was murmuring Oh my God! Oh my God! with one hand on her heart and the other on the phone, ready to call the police, while through the reedy speakers Dalida’s voice could be heard singing dramatically about Gigi getting her heart broken in America. I walked out with the cooks and a handful of customers who had suddenly lost interest in their meals.

Claude had managed to catch the man and was pinning him to the ground in an armlock.

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